A friend living in central Portugal tells us how coronavirus restrictions are operating there.
Cafes are closed except for take-out, so the workmen in the nearby town buy their coffees and sit with their mates on the wall like swallows on a telephone wire, gassing happily at each other. Unlike in the UK, there seem to be no police swooping down on them in supercharged Vauxhall Astras; this is Europe, where the authorities make crazy rules and private individuals cheerfully ignore them.
Shops are sitting ducks for officialdom, though, so they have to comply. Our friend was asked for donations for a children's charity and tried to buy supplies in the supermarket. 'Non-essential' items are screened off - you can buy food there, and disposable nappies, but baby clothes: no.
Same for women's lingerie, and adult clothes generally. Our friend is now ashamed to hang her pyjamas on the line because of the holes in them.
Speaking of washing, she ordered a supply of eco washing powder by post from abroad; the cost was c.€35 but the import duty €48.The Portuguese have form when it comes to rapacious imposts. Back in 2018 someone there showed me a second-hand Triumph Stag that he imported; the Government wanted €58,000 to let him register the vehicle. It's illegal under EU rules, but my acquaintance explained that Portugal is happy to pay the fine every year, because the swindle is so lucrative.
So, naked babies, holes in your underwear and robbery by post: good going, Senhores.
So it's not only the Germans who let power go to their heads.
Balham, UK, on Good Friday, part of the most important festival in the Christian calendar:
Standing at the altar was a nice touch, don't you think? The cherry on top of the cupcake. What next - occupying the aron hakodesh in a synagogue, or the mihrab of a mosque?
I think we've come a long way from Dixon of Dock Green. Btw who snitched on these worshippers?
A representative of Polish Catholic Mission Balham, which runs the church, added worshippers "obeyed" the police "without objection".
"We believe, however, that the police have brutally exceeded their powers by issuing their warrant for no good reason," the spokesman added.
"We regret that the rights of the faithful have been wronged on such an important day for every believer, and that our worship has been profaned."
And here, in Canada, SIX police are needed to barge into a church - this time, without a warrant (see how the overreach begins so quickly?)
Even more astonishing is their slowness to leave, when they know exactly that they have no leg to stand on, legally. The pastor is driven to ask them if they are capable of understanding English. Should he have called the police?
What an irony, that a faith for which many have been prepared to accept martyrdom should be crimped by uniformed bullies 'saving' them from a tiny risk to their health.
There's a good piece here on legal protections for freedom to worship:
Apparently he thinks the PM is a ‘buffoon’ – now that Sir
Alan is no longer an MP he can indulge in such un-Parliamentary language – and
many of Sir Alan’s former colleagues are also the targets of his insults.
Perhaps he might have spoken differently - at least in public - had he
succeeded in his bid for the Party leadership in 2005, or in his attempt in
2019 to invalidate Boris Johnson’s new government https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7271967/Boris-gears-Brexit-battle-foreign-office-minister-Alan-Duncan-QUITS.html
.
However I seem to detect a certain lack of logic in his
diary reference (18 April 2017) to ‘extreme Brexiteer nutters’, presumably
meaning much of the general public rather than merely some of his colleagues.
Sir Alan served as an MP for nearly three decades, and also
as a Minister in Her Majesty’s Government. What did he think he was doing? What
did he imagine Brexit was about?
Brexit was not about restoring power to ‘the people’. We do
not usually govern ourselves by plebiscite – the Referendum was one such, but
only needed because Parliament had forgotten its duty and PM Cameron, together
with the media establishment, had been so completely out of touch with the
people.
Brexit was the reassertion, not of the public’s, but of Parliament’s
sovereignty. Lord Justice Laws, in his 2002 ruling on the appeal re ‘Thoburn
v Sunderland City Council’, said http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2002/195.html
(para. 59):
‘… there is nothing in the ECA
which allows the Court of Justice, or any other institutions of the EU, to
touch or qualify the conditions of Parliament's legislative supremacy in the
United Kingdom. Not because the legislature chose not to allow it; because by
our law it could not allow it. That being so, the legislative and judicial
institutions of the EU cannot intrude upon those conditions. The British
Parliament has not the authority to authorise any such thing. Being
sovereign, it cannot abandon its sovereignty.’ (my emphasis)
It took 30 years from our first entering the EEC to get this
clarification, and there can be little doubt that the Continental intention was
always to destroy national sovereignty by degrees; but with a great effort,
Gulliver broke the threads and sat up. We’re still picking off the fluff.
Now it may be that Sir Alan believes we should be a uni-people
governed remotely by a committee whom we do not elect and cannot reject, but I
do not see how this squares with his espousal of libertarianism. Indeed, as we
have now fallen under the control of a watered-down and so far largely
well-intentioned healthcare version of revolutionary France’s Committee Of
Public Safety, I should have been pleased to see Sir Alan’s strictures on our
sudden and almost complete loss of liberty, enforced by gendarmes keen to
overreach their already broadened powers.
Especially, I fail to understand why his roles as an MP, and
sometime British Government Minister, are consistent with a Remainer’s implicit
commitment to vitiate and ultimately abolish the sovereignty of the Crown in
Parliament.
So if he asks why I do not take him as seriously as he does,
I am tempted to give him the advice he gave to Boris Johnson: ‘Look in the
****ing mirror!’
I wrote a piece on velodromes many years ago; this is not an update as the original has been lost in space or somewhere similar. Many today of those engaged in or interested in track cycling have never seen a velodrome that doesn’t look like the ones in Manchester and the Olympic Park in London: all are indoors and have a standardised size of 250 metres in length, despite there not being an official laid down length; all now conform, partly because records can be more uniformly set on a standardized track, as in athletics.
Whilst that makes sense it is on the assumption that all velodromes are indoors. Nothing could be further from the truth. Before the indoor velodrome became the ‘norm’ for Olympic and World Championships, indoor tracks were of varying lengths as explained below. There was a period when they tried to make outdoor tracks conform for the same events and they made them 333 metres long, i.e. three laps to a kilometre, but the indoor 250 metre tracks took over before many were established,
Early velodromes had no such constraints and that showed when I was riding, as many of the tracks in the UK and abroad had all sorts of strange quirks in surfaces, track length and degree of banking. There was also the matter of the actual shape: in today's homogenised world that doesn’t make sense, but when cycling first became a big spectator sport it was track cycling that brought in the spectators and tracks were put up where they could be fitted in, no one worried about any conformity, and it was one of those items no one really gave much thought to when I was riding; if anything it added to the experience.
Those ‘odd’ tracks were just part of the circuit and were treated as such,.I never heard anyone castigating the fact that they didn’t all conform; the only complaint was that some had a surface, like Fallowfield (1892) in Manchester (the long gone home track of Reg Harris, probably still our greatest track sprinter) where if you fell off it would tear your skin away, such was the abrasive nature of it, until later it was resurfaced.
Fallowfield also had that rare distinction of hosting an FA cup final in 1893 when Wolves beat Everton 1-0 and somehow 45,000 spectators got into a venue that held a maximum of 15,000! and two Rugby League Challenge Cup finals during the same period.
Most of those old outdoor tracks were multi-sports arenas, with cycling, athletics and even football on the infield being held at the same meeting in the same arena, something that cannot be done any more with the small tracks.
A version that is used on the Continent is the multi-use 'sportshalle', with cycle tracks in sections that can be put away when not needed and other sports or activities take over the space; we don’t really have one in this country.
In this photo from 1985 the slow erosion of the Fallowfield track means that where the surface has eroded it reveals the abrasive shale-based earlier surface.
Brighton may not seem an obvious choice for such an iconic and important velodrome, yet within the boundaries of the same town is the oldest working velodrome in the world. Preston Park is a track I only raced on once; in many ways it has only a faint resemblance to a velodrome as we know it today, but one has to remember the times when it was built when anything went regards design and layout. It is in effect four straights with banked corners, almost a road circuit, but it survives and so it should; to have survived when nearly all the old tracks have gone is an achievement in itself - it should have a preservation order on it! This not very exciting video, the only one I could find, shows exactly what it is, 577 metres long and built in 1877.
Because of its shape and size it is often used as a road circuit for short events, no self respecting trackie would ride on a track with a geared road bike and it would not normally be allowed; but Preston Park is not a normal velodrome and anything that keeps it in use is to be applauded.
After a campaign against threats to close the track because of ‘elf and safety’ concerns, funds were made available in 2015 to upgrade the track and resume normal service, and quite right too.
The south coast is home to other oddities in the world of velodromes. Just along the coast in Portsmouth, what used to be known as Alexandra Park and is now the Mountbatten centre, only has one straight and the rest is a continual curve, unique I believe in the world's velodromes; another long 537 metres. Somehow I never got to ride there.
There was also another that appears to have been erased from history in a park in Southampton. It too was a long, quite flat track with an athletic track inside it. My records on this one have also gone, though I had a success there.
An amazing-for-the-time cycle track was built on the roof of the Landmark Hotel London in 1899. This was not for competition use but for clients to use for exercise. This is one of those projects one would have loved to have a picture of, but despite endless Googling nothing has come up.
Many would believe that the computer-designed marvels that now are in all major cities worldwide were the first of their type. Not so: indoor wooden tracked velodromes were there almost from the start. The early six-day races that started in the USA were all on wooden tracks; many were able to be dismantled and used elsewhere as and when needed. Many were shoehorned into very small spaces: there was a wooden outdoor track in the beer garden of a Danish pub back in the Sixties.
When the six day races returned to London in the late Sixties a demountable track of 143 metres was used and a slightly large one a couple of years later; one of them now resides in Chalshot in Southampton.
The six day races were an enormous success both in the USA and back in Europe. Here in the UK there were six day races in Aberdeen, Bristol, Dublin, Dundee, Glasgow Leeds, York and many more venues all on wooden indoor tracks long gone. Many were never intended to be used again and were simply taken apart and the wood sold.
Six day racing spread even to Australia and some of them were held on outdoor tracks. Again, the tracks were often temporary affairs and in order to save money many had the boards across the track and lengthwise; this restricted the design as there was no curvature built into the bankings or lead-ins, making them hard work to ride.
An even earlier version of that type of track is shown in this remarkable photo of a women’s race from 1897, one of the earliest photos of cycle racing taken. Although very degraded, it shows the ladies on a track with the boards laid across the track. The picture and words come from an article in Six Day Racing; Laura Trott eat your heart out, these ladies were almost certainly at that time professional, competing for money.
The problem with wooden tracks outdoors is the obvious one of weather resistance. Even the best materials need maintenance and many simply succumbed to the elements and were dismantled never to reappear. The most obvious example I used in my original piece, the beautiful velodrome built for the 1960 Rome Olympics, died because it was not maintained, was underused and had a building defect that emerged right from the start, so it went from this:
To this:
The velodrome was eventually put out of its misery and the track sold as firewood.
As with the Rome track the velodrome built for the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh also suffered from neglect and lack of use. The difference here was they threw money at it and it hosted another Commonwealth games in’86, only for the cycle to be repeated. Outdoor wooden tracks are a luxury, they need constant maintenance which is expensive and requires specialists.
These vain glorious projects look good on paper but for the long term are not good value and fail to serve the cyclists of all levels that use them or want to use them. It is noticeable that a new tarmac velodrome with softer bankings is proposed to replace it. Assuming there is the demand for it, it will serve the area in a much more practical way and last a lot longer at a much reduced cost.
If built properly concrete makes almost as fast a track as wood anyway. When I attended the ‘83 World Championships as a spectator in Zurich, the old outdoor 333 metre Oerlikon velodrome built in 1912 had such a good surface that world records were set on it, at a time when the thinking was you had to have a wooden track for the fastest times.
The track that held the ‘72 Worlds in Leicester was tarmac, they then changed to a wood surface and again being outdoors it fell into disrepair and was finally demolished; it seems they never learn.
This 50s photo shows one of the many board tracks put up in Australia that I mentioned earlier; oh for that weather! The cheap to build tracks rarely lasted for any prolonged period and were never intended to; the cross track boards can clearly be seen in this picture.
Examples of these old oddities abound in the UK. Palmer Park in Reading had until recently a shale surface that meant you slid on the bankings if you were not careful. Even more strange was Roundhay Park in Leeds that was/is a banked grass track created in 1897; grass tracks were prevalent post war as a cheap way of track racing given the cost of hard surface velodromes and they had the advantage of being part of athletic meetings on the same surface; they were also instrumental in improving bike riding skills - racing on a flat bend on grass is not easy as it goes against the laws of physics.
And here's another Yorkshire banked grass track built in 1897 in Richmond during the cycling boom. It is very difficult to find any images or reference to these old tracks but the Richmond one features in this short video from around 1.40 and shows an important part to the golden age of cycling popularity. Incredible that something like this, just banked earth and grass, has survived for so long.
Many old tracks refuse to die. There was a little known one at Slough on what was the industrial estate, it surrounded a football pitch and was of concrete construction. I knew it well and won the season-long junior competition there in ‘58 ? I believe. Now bulldozed away it refuses to disappear as seen from this aerial photo. The curved ends of where the bankings were is still visible.
The same can be seen of the old Paddington Recreation ground track in Maida Vale;very popular, well used, it suffered from indignant residents who complained when there was a plan to upgrade the old place; from its 19th century origins, all that time, all that enjoyment to thousands who competed and watched, wiped out by NIMBYs! It was near where I worked at the time and was the first cycle track that I rode on and the one I used the most. For the big meetings illegal betting was carried on in the stand areas. The picture below is from 1940 before tiered concrete standing areas were built in the home straight. It was another of the very early tracks in this country and one that should have survived. In the photo you can see the athletics track on the inside: this was common with many of the outdoor velodromes, and meetings combining the two sports were not uncommon; one at Paddington after the 1958 Commonwealth Games in Cardiff, with many of the competitors from that event, drew a huge crowd - I know, because I was there.
Slough Track still haunts:
Paddington Recreation Ground track, 1940
Yet another unusual track that looked perfectly normal was the Butts Stadium in Coventry. This had a misshapen exit from the first bend that threw you out from the inside; you soon got used to it but using it for the first time gave a weird sensation.
It was built in 1881 by local business men who saw a profit in promoting pro races with prize money, attracting riders from far afield; it even boasted a world championship. Originally this was another banked grass track, the riders in those days were not so fussy about the surface they rode on if the money was good! Later it became a shale surface and when the council took it over in 1939 it was tarmacked, as I remember it; another that was demolished in the Eighties.
Another sad sight, yet I had good memories of this place as I won my first senior race while still a junior there - I was sixteen and you were a junior then until eighteen; there were none of the other age grades in those days, e.g. schoolboy classes, under 21s etc. And it took only two events to become a national champion as a junior: the track sprint and the road race, equivalent to the 100 metres and marathon in athletics.
The same meeting saw for one of the most spectacular accidents seen in cycling: during a distance race a rider swung out too close to the outside barriers that consisted of horizontal boards nailed to posts, but there was a gap between the boards and the rider actually got his pedal between them and was catapulted what looked like twenty feet straight up in the air still holding his handlebars which had been wrenched from the bike. He landed on his back with such a bang I thought he was dead, the noise could be heard across the stadium, yet after everyone rushed to his aid he got up and walked away; just sometimes, someone smiles on you.
London had many cycle tracks during that golden age, but by the post war period they were reduced to just two, and two of the oldest at that: Paddington as above, and Herne Hill in Dulwich South London - like Paddington it was well used and its Good Friday meet attracted riders from all over the world. Herne Hill was threatened with closure when its lease ran out but petitions, fund raising and a lot of work by activists saved the old girl and she is now refurbished and serving the track cycling community again.
One other track survived for decades: the White City velodrome used for the 1908 Olympics. Herne Hill was used for the 1948 games, fell into disuse but remained under the stands built for the greyhound track that followed and was still there when the place was bulldozed and built on.
The 1908 games suffered from appalling weather and whereas today events on a track in inclement weather would be halted for safety reasons, in 1908 they went ahead. The photo below shows the finish of a distance race in pouring rain, something today you just would not see.
It is often thought that cycling racing was started on the European mainland; that is not true and the first official bicycle race that was held in France was won by a Brit. There was a long drought in success until more recent times though we have always had world champions, just a bit thinner on the ground until present times.
Abroad, I did visit when it still was a velodrome the specialist track at Wuppertal in Germany when riding over there in a representative competition. It was built for motor paced racing, very popular in Germany in earlier days: this was racing behind what are known as the big motors - not the Derny/moped affairs still going today, they were normally 1000cc Jap-engined specialist motorbikes with belt drive for smoothness and a roller behind the rear wheel so the rider could close up in the slipstream.
The speed these riders got up to dictated the design of the track and Wuppertal as can just be seen in this old photo had in effect two tracks; the banking had a steeper upper level for the motor paced events. If there were any other tracks built this way I never heard of them but during the early days when motor paced racing was popular I expect somewhere there was something similar.
Part of the old Wuppertal track survived as a terrace for the local football club for many years and then even that went when they rebuilt the stadium.
In Scotland Celtic Park, home to the eponymous football club, had a cycle track round the outside of the football pitch when the new ground was built in 1892. Even in Scotland the popularity of track racing during that period could not be ignored.
Another famous or infamous velodrome was the Vel D’Hiv in Paris. Its illustrious history was stained forever when Jacques Goddet, director of the ASO, Amaury Sports Association which also ran the TDF, from 1936 to 1986, was responsible for the Paris velodrome into which 8,000 Jews were herded by French police acting on Nazi orders. Goddet handed over the keys of the velodrome, the Vel D’Hiv, to the French police, although the exact circumstances under which he did so are unknown. The French Police only revealed papers showing the extent of their collaboration in 2012! The track was demolished in 1959; the track itself could not obviously be blamed for anything to do with what happened but its association lived long after the event.
We don’t have many velodromes even today in this country. Those old reminders that still exist from that golden age should be cherished, they are a reminder of our Victorian position in the world when anything was possible and the early cycle tracks were part of that.
In an age when everything has to conform it is refreshing to see nonconformity enduring. The day when everything is exactly the same will mean we have lost something never likely to return.
I am still reading Tuvia Tenenbom, who describes himself as a 'recovering intellectual,' and would like to share this with you. The clever people here in Tel Aviv seem to be a universal type: one who cannot see past the end of his nose but confidently looks down it at you.
I sit down with a number of leftist intellectuals, university professors and such, for dinner in quite an exensive restaurant, and talk with the nicest-looking of the bunch who holds the title of 'political psychologist.' The first thing she says to me is this: 'I am a liberal, super liberal, and I'm an atheist.' When the waiter comes she orders café latte, but being an intellectual that she is, she can't just order latte without making it tasteless. Her latte, she tells the waiter, should contain coffee without caffeine and milk without fat, and be served in a clear glass.
Her speciality, she informs me, is religious extremists, mainly settlers. The settlers, she declares with authority and certainty, are idiots. And when I ask her if she read any of their literature, just to make sure that they are 'certified nuts,' she tells me that she doesn't have to do so since she has read many of their detractors who quote them, and this is more than enough.
In addition to her settler expertise, she tells me that she's also an expert on Judaism, which she classifies as a 'pagan religion.' I ask her if she has ever studied Judaism, a question that makes her raise her voice in anger. For years and years and years, she yells at this offender of her high stature, she has been studying Judaism over and over and over. I light up a cigarette, inhale and exhale, look at her and ask her: Could you tell me, please, what the 'Vision of Isaiah' is? That's the most basic question one could ask and any student of Bible 101 could have answered this question in his sleep, but this learned lady has no clue. What vision? What Isaiah?
I am befuddled by her lack of knowledge but everybody at this table asserts beyond doubt that I lack the mental capacity to understand higher concepts. They pound me with super brainy words of no meaning, and I sip my Chivas Regal I reminisce about one of my favorite rabbis from the day of old, a genius by any standards: 'He who cannot explain his thesis in simple words is he who has no thesis.'
The existentialist, Albert Camus, argues that if there is no faith, there can be no hope for us, and if there is no hope for us, then we are all doomed to despair:
"Up till now everyone derived their coherence from their Creator. But from the moment that (we) consecrate (our) rapture with God, (we) find (our)selves delivered over to the fleeting moment, to the passing day, and the wasted sensibility."
Fritz Schumacher summed up our contemporary sense of “wasted sensibility” by saying, simply, that it showed that “the modern experiment to live without religion has failed”. Schumacher believes that our only chance of any success in developing the communities we need for survival, is by getting back into religion, and reconnecting with others, through the Other, once again.
Social media teach us that facts and logic make very little difference in argument.
The Israeli-born (now US-based) writer Tuvia Tenenbom has written a series of books recounting his experiences in the assumed guise of a non-Jew (he is blond and Western-looking), to get people to divulge their real feelings.
Arriving in Jerusalem, he encounters a Palestinian professor who is looking forward to an interview with a German journalist, so he can tell him the truth of issues in Israel:
'What is the truth? He shares it with me: the Israelis make sure that he, being a Palestinian, can't own a house [...] he proudly shares with me, he is not a man only of the mind but also a man of means: he owns a house in east Jerusalem, and he also owns another one in a place called Shuaffat.
'There are people who are alcoholics and there are people who are recovering alcoholics, meaning they've stopped drinking. I happen to be a recovering intellectual [Tenenbom was raised in an ultra-Orthodox family] and I draw from my former self to understand this intellectual. Logically it's impossible for a man who owns nothing also to own two houses. But "intellectually," you can explain away everything.'
Shortly after, the writer meets a couple of German girls who have volunteered to work with the Palestinians. He asks one, why:
"Three years ago I volunteered for Israel and I fell in love wth the Jewish people."
"And that's why you decided to come again?"
"Yes."
Three years ago you fell in love with the Jews and that's why you are now helping the Palestinians?
She looks at me in disbelief, very upset: "What are you trying to say?"
In the late 1970s, one of my Birmingham housemates was a young Yemeni who had escaped north through Saudi to Europe. He invited some Libyan students over one evening, and we got talking. They were full of praise for what Gaddafi was doing for the people.
They were also convinced of the Irish Republican cause. They thought they knew all about it, though they had never been there, seemed unaware that the IRA was a decided minority within the Catholic minority, and so on and on. I thought it best not to tell them of my father's several tours of military duty in Northern Ireland. But they were like so many people: on subjects that mattered to them, they 'just knew.'
Cartoonist and writer Scott Adams said recently on his podcast that you should abandon facts and logic and use psychological trickery instead. For example, with someone stolidly repeating the untruth that Trump advocated drinking bleach to kill Covid-19, you could ask their position on the Loch Ness Monster etc, saying that you were testing just how gullible they were.
Bad news, if Adams is right and most debates are bullsh*t contests.
Still, I recall overhearing two Asian lads talking in a secondary school, and one quoted what was obviously an old saying: 'When two people speak, one of them is lying.'
Yesterday we looked at university-'educated' nitwits - should the collective noun be 'u-nits'?
Now, here's how, further down the ladder, daycare and schooling can make a huge difference:
Millionaire uses fortune to help kids in struggling town
By Scott Stump (April 17, 2013)
Harris Rosen went from a childhood in a rough New York City neighborhood to becoming a millionaire whose company owns seven hotels in Orlando, but his self-made success is not his proudest achievement. Twenty years ago, the Orlando, Fla. neighborhood of Tangelo Park was a crime-infested place where people were afraid to walk down the street. The graduation rate at the local high school was 25 percent.
Harris Rosen went from a childhood in a rough New York City neighborhood to becoming a millionaire whose company owns seven hotels in Orlando, but his self-made success is not his proudest achievement.
Twenty years ago, the Orlando, Fla. neighborhood of Tangelo Park was a crime-infested place where people were afraid to walk down the street. The graduation rate at the local high school was 25 percent. Having amassed a fortune from his success in the hotel business, Rosen decided Tangelo Park needed some hospitality of its own.
“Hospitality really is appreciating a fellow human being,” Rosen told Gabe Gutierrez in a segment that aired on TODAY Wednesday. “I came to the realization that I really had to now say, ‘Thank you.’’’
Rosen, 73, began his philanthropic efforts by paying for day care for parents in Tangelo Park, a community of about 3,000 people. When those children reached high school, he created a scholarship program in which he offered to pay free tuition to Florida state colleges for any students in the neighborhood.
In the two decades since starting the programs, Rosen has donated nearly $10 million, and the results have been remarkable. The high school graduation rate is now nearly 100 percent, and some property values have quadrupled. The crime rate has been cut in half, according to a study by the University of Central Florida.
"We've given them hope,’’ Rosen said. “We've given these kids hope, and given the families hope. And hope is an amazing thing."
Tangelo Park resident Georgia Gordan admitted that she was ready to move away 20 years ago, saying the neighborhood was “drug-infested” and remembering when people were afraid to walk outside. Gordan decided to stay when Rosen offered free day care, and her daughter eventually became a college scholarship recipient from Rosen’s program.
“It's one thing to offer a scholarship to one person one time,’’ Gordan’s daughter, Rachel Jones-Manuel, told TODAY. “But to continuously, for over 20 years, to continue to provide this type of incentive for people to go to school, I think is absolutely wonderful."
Rosen is hoping other private donors see the positive effects of his scholarship programs and start their own versions in hard-hit communities across the country. His generosity continues to benefit students like scholarship recipient Kamillia Crawford, who is a freshman at Central Florida studying to become a lawyer.
“(I want to) make sure that I show the world that with his gift, I was able to reach my max potential,’’ Crawford told TODAY.
'JD' contacted me today to say (order slightly altered):
Post in The Conservative Woman today about Gates and his plan to 'seed' the atmosphere with calcium carbonate to 'protect' the earth from the sun. I had read about this last year but it is planned for June this year in northern Sweden. Recently Elon Musk called Gates a knucklehead; an optimistic assessment of his intelligence.
But it comes back to what I wrote in one of my posts: the ignorance of politicians, civil servants, academics, 'experts' and the over-educated. Here is a perfect example which I recently sent to Wiggia. His one word response was - blimey!
The man in the video, Tomasz Schafernaker, is a meteorologist who worked at the Met Office. This appearance on Would I Lie To You is not only unbelievable but is unforgiveable. Even David Mitchell was lost for words.
We are back to one of my hobby horses; those in the green corner are usually highly educated and ignorant. You will know by looking at their weather page that they are fully on board with all this climate change nonsense and green issues.
School is where you go to learn how to be stupid and university is the finishing school where you go to have the remains of your brain given a quick rinse in the latest woke fads.
____________
I have often noted how 'celebs' on quiz shows seem more ignorant than contestants drawn from the general public.
How to account for their success? I assume that it's down to focusing narrowly on what gets them where they want to be. I think that is a winning strategy in a situation where generally we are safe and secure and the social/work/political hierarchy has been settled. All you need to know is your performing role, and who to suck up to and amuse.
We inhabit a complex social and linguistic structure, mistaking human words and power relations for reality. Only when disaster strikes are we made to wake up truly - think of how the butler become the boss in The Admirable Crichton, when his practical and organisational skills become essential to the survival of an upper-class party shipwrecked on a desert island.
Ironically, the term 'woke' as used today really means 'in a fantasy' - riding political hobby-horses while remaining astonishingly ignorant. The first time I heard the modern usage was when watching 'Breaking Bad', when the chemistry teacher Walter White is finally provoked by poor pay and conditions and the scorn of his students into breaking his civilised conditioning and turning wholeheartedly to crime: 'I am awake,' he says ominously, meaning the exact opposite of the baby-idealism of cocksure, semi-educated 'woke' youngsters.
Our world is complex but artificial, like the Mayan building complexes left to rot in the encroaching jungle when calamity overtook that society. In my days as an English teacher, I used to attend meetings of the National Association for the Teaching of English; it was all politics, progressivism and 'skills' - leading to today's schooling that concentrates on teachable-and-testable duckspeaking about 'fronted adverbials' while airbrushing out much of our literary heritage, with its embarrassing links to religion, history and classical learning. I said we have become experts in abstractions, but cannot name the plants we see when we go outside; they looked at me as though I were mad.
Ah, learning. My friend's three children spent never a day in school; two each went on to do two degree courses in Europe (one is dyslexic and only decided to learn to read at age ten), while the third has travelled widely and walked into jobs lacking a fistful of exam certificates but having a powerful and engaging personality.
At one stage, the young lady felt she might need formal academic guidance on one course, and went to a sixth form college in the Midlands. She soon gave up, saying that her fellow students didn't really want to learn and (possibly as a result) the teacher didn't really want to teach. She went on to get first-class honours in mathematics.
Modern society and its unbelievable wealth depend on STEM subjects - even just to maintain the systems we have, let alone develop further; and to provide for the 7.7-billion-plus humans on the planet, most of whom are trying to attain the Western standard of living. Meanwhile, as my American brother tells me, university managements cut away at the budgets of 'hard' academic disciplines while boosting business management courses (you can never have enough Pointy-Haired Bosses) and pouring millions into college sport.
You never know what knowledge will turn out to be useful. I recall seeing a TV programme that mentioned an episode in the North Africa campaigns in the Second World War, in which an American general (Patton?) remembered a detail in the Old Testament (Joshua, Chapter 8?) about how the ancient war-leader used a valley to hide a force to ambush the foe; the modern officer looked for and found the dip (not observable from a distance) and so managed to smuggle a column past the enemy's position.
Again, there is an anecdote told by David Niven of a discussion with Winston Churchill in 1941:
’Do you think, sir,’ I asked, ‘that the Americans will ever come into the war?’ He fixed me with that rather intimidating gaze and unloosed the famous jaw-jutting bulldog growl. ‘Mark my words—something cataclysmic will occur!’ Four weeks later the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
“Months later, when we were once more at Ditchley, I asked if the Prime Minister remembered what he had said so long ago. His reply gave me goose pimples.
That sort of learning informed the great man's gambles - not all paid off, but enough did.
.
Do our leaders today have that breadth and depth of learning that will save us in time of peril? Or do they, like Crichton's social superiors, have a 'little man' who sorts everything for them? Is it the right 'little man'? How would they know?
We strolled a few yards up the damp road and into the pub. The board outside was there, advertising the competition for 8.30, but there was hardly anybody in. The gambling machine's display seemed to be keeping time with the piped music, until a man returned to it and fed in a tenner, which took several goes.
"It's full."
"I know, I'm trying to get some of it back out."
Gradually the entrants gathered: three chefs on our left, a couple of solitaries at this end of the bar, and a trio of regulars at the other end, hidden behind the pillar.
"We'll start at nine."
A man and his girlfriend dropped in to tell the owner about the funeral arrangements for a local who'd be known to others here, though he'd kept himself to himself.
Then we began. Welcome to the fourth pub quiz at the Castle. Googlers would be instantly disqualified. Prize a ten pound bar tab for the winner, and a packet of crisps for the best team name. As Brummies, my wife said we should be the Peaky Blinders.
"Is there a picture round?"
We said it would be whoever could draw the best picture, but the barman handed us all a streakily-copied sheet of logos to identify.
A couple of years ago at the Waterman's, a big bloke had come in dressed as a Roman soldier and been thrown out for farting. The question-setter that time had been Lily, who'd escaped the dullness of Plymouth, but she's moved on again with baby and partner. Her sheets were full-colour and artistically illustrated.
Our host began squinting at his iphone and reading out questions.
"What type of monkey lives on the Rock of Gibraltar?"
"Orang-utans," said one of the chefs to his mates.
"Spaniards."
The lone wolves were comparing notes on the picture round.
"What element is needed for all forms of combustion?"
CO2 wasn't right when we came to mark a loner's sheet, but he can't have heard the barman remark "Another oxygen-related question" to the regulars round the corner.
Between rounds, the majority decamped to the pavement outside for a smoke, including Mine Host, leaving his taps vulnerable in the near-deserted bar. Stupid law.
A chef showed us a party picture on his phone, with two ghosts' heads in the group. Later, one of his mates suggested it could be done by someone changing position while the phone panned round. Post-quiz, a couple of girls turned up, one of whom had taken the pic, and she said they hadn't done that.
Next round. One of the loners left abruptly. He'd scored 5 out of 20, most questions not answered and the rest semi-legible. His response to "What do the letters RAM stand for in computing?" had been "ramofocation". (What do the letters THC stand for?)
Another chef came in and was updated on the ghosts.
"What are there twenty-six pairs of in the human body?"
We got an extra point for spelling chromosomes right. We had briefly considered "bollocks."
There was much anguish over what the C stood for in YMCA. And when asked what nuts were used in making pesto, the chefs agreed on cashews. Apparently the answer to "the butcher, the baker and the..." was not Old Mother Hubbard. The cry in fencing was what we'd put, "Touché!", not "Dun ya!" as they'd said - and there was no consolation point for correct punctuation.
Then there was the dispute with the quizmaster.
"What is the coloured part of the eve called?"
"Don't you mean eye?"
"No, there's no i in it."
"No, a y instead of a v."
"It definitely says eve," said the barman, screwing up his eyes and peering closer.
"If it's eye it's iris," said the remaining loner.
We settled for eye.
The Peaky Blinders struggled with the logos. Mercedes and Camel cigarettes were a cinch, but the double W defeated us (Wonder Woman) and the stylised R (Robin, Batman's partner). The head surrounded by a Greek wave motif turned out to be Versace.
The last question was impromptu, because of IT malfunction. "It's covered by the Google bar." "Move your thumb up." "I've done that."
So he thought and gave us, "What Spanish island did I spend a few months on when I was 21?"
"Alcatraz," said the loner.
"Majorca."
"No, it wasn't Majorca," said the barman.
We did our best.
The regulars beat us by two points, one of which I'd lost when I made my wife put yellow instead of white for the colour Wimbledon tennis balls used to be before they turned green. And we'd forgotten the candlestick in the six murder weapons in Cluedo; and it was a revolver, not a pistol (Mine Host had been very firm on that). The winners promptly left.
Best team name was between the chefs, who'd concocted something ending with a c followed by hunt, and the loner's Alone In The Dark. I gave my casting vote for the latter and the chefs accepted the justice of losing out for obscenity.
I stayed on for a half pint of lager while my wife went back to make a cheese and onion sandwich for me, but without onion as we'd used it up. The loner was a graphic designer who told me all sorts of interesting things about design, photography, maintaining copyright on the internet and making websites. He reckoned his 8-year-old child was ahead of him and you didn't need to be in London to go global any more.
A Hendrix documentary was on the screen behind us. I recalled seeing the news of his death as I walked into Newport bus station; AITD told me he'd covered it at college. Memory versus history. I told him what I'd only recently learned about how Bruce Lee had died (aspirin, the studio had spun -rubbish, it was Nepalese hash, especially dangerous if you had no body fat to absorb the toxins); he told me about his own martial arts expertise.
Home for a cheese sandwich, a shot of Chivas and the rest of Hendrix.
The call for an inquiry into the government's handling of Covid follows an inevitable pattern in these matters, various organisations are getting their ducks in a row to make political capital out of government mistakes during the last twelve months of lock down and confusion.
There is certainly a case to get to the bottom of why we along with other nations followed the path we did and are doing; never before has a pandemic been handled in this way, and in the scheme of things a minor pandemic at that.
The cris of ‘one life’ and 'saving the NHS' seem to have been enough to chuck certain sections of society on to the scrap heap and close down sections like hospitality and live entertainment to such an extent that much will not recover in years, bankruptcy and unemployment beckon in those sectors like never before.
Naturally the call for further measures - rightly or wrongly, we have currently no way of telling - have come from the public sector safe in their jobs and protected pensions, the NHS has (apart from those on the front line, and we have no means of finding out how many that encompassed) been at home or working very short weeks, such as GPs yet still all get their full salaries. Where I live we have many doctors, surgeons and nurses as our neighbours as we are near the city hospital; along with teachers, many have been home for long periods of time, and the ‘we have been working from home’ mantra doesn’t wash when you see DIY and home improvements being carried out everywhere on a grand scale.
The decision to shut down the NHS to save itself was one that has grave consequences for those suffering from anything but the virus. The acronym the Covid Health Service is certainly justified, but with reports beginning to leak out about how many people went into hospital Covid-free only to catch the virus while there, perhaps there is a good case for being a Covid-only service; who in their right mind would want to go into hospital when the chances of contracting the virus have been as high as 40% - see this from the Daily Telegraph:
“More than 11,000 people who went into England's hospitals with unrelated issues contracted virus in December and early January”
The death toll from failure to treat other conditions will probably never be released and more likely hidden and a lot of can-kicking will ensue.
Care homes are the biggest disgrace in health this country has seen. The decisions on decanting elderly patients from hospitals into care homes, the lack of provision for care home workers re PPE and the failure to even monitor what was going on hovers like a stench over those responsible whether NHS or civil servants.
So an inquiry is inevitable. We are good at inquiries; as has been said before they are one of the few growth areas in the country these days. We or those who are involved do like a good and long inquiry, the longer the better, longer because all those on the inquiry gravy train carry on earning at the expense of the taxpayer and longer because it suits those in the headlights because people simply get bored with the whole and forget why the inquiry was held in the first place; a win-win, but not for the general public, the people affected by the decisions and by the same token the ones paying for it all.
In the last 30 years there have been 68 public inquiries. Only 5 have had their recommendations acted upon in any way. £635 million has been spent on them up till 2017. Even the Bloody Sunday one has done nothing during the years it has gone on to change anything, a total waste of everyone's time.
There are currently two in progress, if you can call it progress: the Grenfell Tower inquiry and the contaminated blood inquiry. The Grenfell inquiry was sabotaged by vested interests from the start, - wrong sort of inquiry board, wrong sort of ‘experts,’ local council absolving itself - and then it became a platform as so many of this type do today, a platform to display angst for those involved and also to milk the system for money which makes all angst go away if there is enough of it. I suspect everyone will be blamed in one form or another and rightly so but little other than 'lessons have been learned' will come of it; the man who left his fridge on fire and actually caused it all is nowhere to be seen.
We are now going to have a new inquiry into the new coal mine in Cumbria. This has nothing to do with anything other than clear the government of making a ‘wrong’ decision in the first place. It wasn’t wrong of course but the green lobby must have their way on all matters these days and the government has caved in to their demands under the pretext that there have been ‘further developments’ since giving the go-ahead; anyone who believes that needs their bumps felt.
This proposal was to extract coking coal for steel production and had new emission control production facilities but as usual it is never enough for the green lobby, so now, probably after a protracted and expensive inquiry we will stop the mine producing and purchase our coking coal from elsewhere - from a country that can pollute the planet on our behalf, so that’s all right then.
No doubt the calls are going out to likely friends/candidates to run this nice little earner as we speak.
The Jay report into the Rotherham child sex abuse scandal was actually achieved in good time and its conclusions left no doubt as to what had gone on and who was to blame, both perpetrators and police and local government. Despite all that good work the result is a resounding zero, the same thing is still going on and the court cases are still being hushed to protect community cohesion. The government report on the Jay report has been kicked down the road for so long that when it was not released to the public few cared, as was the whole purpose in the first place.
So what is the point of them? Very little is achieved, in fact nothing in the vast majority, people say they are sorry years later, well some do, and it all goes down the memory hole, that’s the way to do it.
And waiting in the wings is potentially the biggest longest most expensive one yet, the Coronavirus Inquiry; what a feast of milking the system on public money that will be!
In fact the 484 Members voting FOR were almost exclusively Conservative and Labour, the exceptions being the DUP's Jim Shannon and the Labour expellee/resignee Claudia Webbe. Alas, neither of the latter two spoke, so their reasons are not clear to me.
As sure as eggs are eggs, we will be back here in six months, at the end of September, being asked to renew this legislation again. It is inevitable, and anyone who thinks it is not is deluding themselves. But this afternoon I am not here to talk about eggs; I want to talk about milk.
In the remaining days of this lockdown, I am going to allow myself an act of defiance—my own protest, which others may join me in. I am going to protest about the price of milk. I am not sure whether I think the price is too high or too low—I shall come to that decision later—but for the next few days I am going to walk around London with a pint of milk on my person, because that pint will represent my protest. There may be others who will choose, too, to walk around London with a pint of milk on their person, and perhaps as we walk past each other in the street our eyes might meet. We might even stop for a chat. But I was thinking to myself, and I will continue to think to myself, what will their pint of milk represent—what will their protest be? Perhaps they will be protesting the roaring back of a mental health demon, brought on by lockdown. Perhaps they will be protesting a renewed battle with anorexia, with depression, with anxiety, with addiction. Perhaps, with their pint of milk, they will be protesting the lack of agency in their life—not being able to make a meaningful decision; maybe a loss of career or job or business. Maybe they will be protesting this country’s slide into authoritarianism, or perhaps they will be protesting the fact that we allow unelected officials to have lecterns at No. 10 to lecture us on how to live our lives. But there might even be people, with their pint of milk, quietly protesting that the route out of lockdown is too slow, or perhaps even too fast. You see, the point is, Madam Deputy Speaker, that these people can project what they like—what concern they have—on to their pint of milk.
My protest, as I said, will be about none of those things. It will simply be about the price of milk and, as I said, for the next few days I will have that pint on me, it will be of symbolic importance to me, and at the end of the day it will be warm, it will have suppurated, and I can choose whether to drink it or pour it away, because it will be robbed of its refreshing elegance by the time it has been in my pocket for 12 hours. And if I pour it away, that might cause people some concern, but it does not matter because it is my pint of milk and it is my protest, and I am not seeking people’s acclaim, endorsement or support in my protest.
And you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, I heard and I listened to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. This will pass; my protest will pass, the pandemic will pass, and in years to come I will be sitting at my kitchen table—perhaps with my wife, and hopefully my children, who will still want to see me—and I will break away from our excited conversation about the day because I will spot that pint of milk on the table, and that pint shall remind me that the act of protest is a freedom—a freedom, not a right, and unless you cherish freedoms every day, unless you fight for freedoms every day, they end up being taken away from you.
Chris Barber, often regarded as the godfather of modern British popular music thanks to his introduction of US blues artists into the UK, died 2 March, after suffering from dementia. He had announced his retirement in 2019, having led a band almost continuously for 70 years.
He brought blues artists such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and Muddy Waters to the UK, feeding the burgeoning British blues boom of the early 1960s.
Barber and Monty Sunshine (clarinet) formed a band in 1953, calling it Ken Colyer's Jazzmen to capitalise on their trumpeter's recent escapades in New Orleans: the group also included Lonnie Donegan (banjo and guitar), Jim Bray (bass), Ron Bowden (drums) and Barber on trombone. Ken Colyer left in 1954 to be replaced by Pat Halcox on trumpet and the band became "The Chris Barber Band".
Hugh Laurie meets the man who brought the Blues to Britain, jazz trombonist Chris Barber.
Donald Christopher 'Chris' Barber is best known as a jazz trombonist. As well as scoring a UK top twenty trad jazz hit, he helped the careers of many musicians, notably the blues singer Ottilie Patterson, who was at one time his wife, and vocalist/banjoist Lonnie Donegan, whose appearances with Barber triggered the skiffle craze of the mid-1950s and who had his first transatlantic hit, "Rock Island Line", while with Chris Barber's band. His providing an audience for Donegan and, later, Alexis Korner, makes Barber a significant figure in the British rhythm and blues and "beat boom" of the 1960s.
Never mind that this video comes from Katie Hopkins who polarises opinions...
Should governments be so keen to tailor propaganda messages in this manipulative way? Even if, as many believe (though clinicians themselves have reservations) the vaccination program is beneficial?
We like to think of ourselves as mostly rational citizens who, as Tony Benn said, merely loan power to Parliament and expect it to be returned to us. It looks as though we're to be treated as gullible jerks.
I really don't know about the safety and efficacy of vaccines or whatever these are, and Dr Vernon Coleman has doubted them for years - but layering propaganda over uncertainty is definitely to be deplored.
On a trip earlier this week, taking the wife to the
supermarket for the weekly shop, I saw one of the saddest sights it has been my
misfortune to come across.
An old boy alone with a stick and a shopping trolley was
walking along on the other side to the road wearing a WW1 style double
respirator and what looked a lint pad beneath as it protruded slightly round
the edges. As he shuffled along stooped over his trolley it was a moment when you
asked yourself, what have those bastards in government done to a small
percentage of the population with their and the compliant MSM continual scare
stories?
The government doesn’t deny the existence of a ‘nudge’ unit: the Behavioural Insights Team was founded in the Cabinet Office in 2010 under
David Cameron's leadership, now owned by the Cabinet Office, NESTA a charity,
which does not show any leaning towards behavioural insights but must have some
input or take out for it to be involved, and employees; makes it sound like a
well meaning mutual!
BIT now operates across the globe. Joseph Goebbels would have
been proud, he never managed to establish that sort of unit outside of Germany.
The Department of Health has been complicit in working with
the nudge unit in applying items that will ‘encourage’practices that promote cleanliness during the
coronavirus such as the hands-face-space jingle and the use of the word 'disgust' to make people adhere to the cleanliness practices. All well and good as far as
it goes, but it has gone further than that.
It is about making people make the right choices, as seen by
the unit, in their own interests. An earlier example of their work was this little
gem which, small as it seems, resulted in many prescription drugs being taken off
the GPs' lists and the patients having to purchase them privately; despite the words in which the action is couched I know from first hand experience it is
not about having to buy your own Paracetamol,it actually eats into necessary drugs that have to be taken on a regular
basis:
'The unit’s successes include sending letters to British GPs
who were prescribing more than their peers, cutting unnecessary prescriptions
by 3.3%.'
The percentage is now higher than that.
There is also the question of how and why this was floated
off from the Cabinet Office and who gained. Nothing is revealed; an old comment
from the Guardian, of all places, asks the same:
'Rather than just publishing this uncritical puff piece, the
Guardian of old would have at least mentioned something about the questions
raised (eg in Private Eye) about how the unit was privatised, its funding, and
the benefits that have accrued to its former civil servant staff.'
Its initial funding was a Lottery grant of £250 million; I
always thought Lottery grants were for good causes, but that finished long ago.
The BIT has had success in several areas, such as getting in tax
revenues due on time, and getting ten million to sign up to pension schemes, if you
can call our state pension schemes good.
The coronavirus was a different beast and early on the head
of BIT mooted 'a policy of "cocooning" groups of people who are most vulnerable to coronavirus' in an interview:
He said: "There's going to be a point, assuming the epidemic flows and grows as it will do, where you want to cocoon, to protect those at-risk groups so they don't catch the disease.
"By the time they come out of their cocooning, herd immunity has been achieved in the rest of the population."
Dr Halpern suggested that volunteers might be enlisted to work in care homes.
"There's a lot of active work going on at the moment about what is it the volunteers could do," he added.
About how to protect care homes, didn’t actually do too well
there, did they? but they ploughed on with their radical suggestions.
Froma Tribune
article:
'For them, public policy is about changing public behaviour
without the public even realising you are there. This seemed a clever approach
to their devotees in the early days, before the government wised up to the
scale of the threat. Now we know it is exactly the wrong way to deal with the
massive social changes the coronavirus pandemic requires.'
Naturally in this age the nudge unit use machine learning,
the study of algorithms and statistical models.
And again we know how well those have panned out during the
pandemic in all quarters, yet still they are allowed to influence policy.
The coronavirus nudging has worked:
the carrot and stick
approach, lock down now for an earlier release
then stay locked down and give
dates into the future that have no relevance to any data that will give the
populace something to look forward to
the use of the 'you will infect someone else
if you do not (fill in the blank yourself) have created for many a real fear.
This virus is made to seem akin to the Black Death, yet it fails to kill more than 0.3% of those that
get it and of those the average age at death is actually higher than the current life
expectancy. All of this has been oft repeated over the last year and still it
goes on despite a virtual nil rate of deaths now.
It is noticeable that certain supermarkets after dealing with
the virus very successfully for this past year have suddenly ramped up the
restrictions: more notices about using the provided sanitiser (it had
disappeared earlier), more notices about not being allowed in without a face
mask, and now more staff are wearing the things where previously many did not,
the distance markings have reappeared and as with our visit to Waitrose today
the announcements on distancing from the announcement system are endless,
resulting in the Morris dancing in the aisles coming back with a vengeance.
This can't be a coincidence. The road map out of the virus as
portrayed by Bojo contained all the carrot and stick caveats of previous
announcements and the nudge unit would be behind it all, but what they have
done to some older folks of which I am one, though not affected,is shameful if
not downright cruel; in the case of the old man at the start of this if you
told him to turn right for the ‘showers’ he would have gone - as Goebbels said, 'if you tell a lie often enough it becomes the truth.'
BIT may have its uses but as with all these attempts to
change people's behaviour there is always the risk of overreach and it becomes
the norm. Subliminal advertising was the same and they banned it years ago; this nudge unit is practising the same psychology, and the temptation for immoral and
dangerous usage with this type of operation is always there and it will be used
for such purposes as sure as night follows day. __________________________________________________________________________________ Sackerson adds:
Mark Knopfler is probably best known for the Dire Straits record called 'Sultans of Swing' but there is much, much more to his musical output than that very melodic and memorable song. A song which has an amusing back-story as Knopfler explains -"The lyrics were inspired by a performance of a jazz band playing in the corner of an almost empty pub in Deptford, South London. At the end of their performance, the lead singer announced their name, the Sultans of Swing; Knopfler found the contrast between the group's dowdy appearance and surroundings and their grandiose name amusing."
His Wiki entry lists his 'style' as being Rock, roots rock (Whatever that is), Celtic rock (actually more Celtic than rock), blues rock, country rock. I'm not sure why Wiki feels the need to add 'rock' to everything.om that it is a fair assessment of the music he has produced in his solo career.
"For he comes, the human child, To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than he can understand."
"The greatest contribution that fairies have made to our culture is in music. Many traditional country dance tunes were copied by local musicians from music they heard played by fairies. That same music is believed by some still to be played, but modern life is no longer attuned to it." - John Michell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Michell_(writer)
'The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries' is a book written by A. E. Evans Wentz in 1911. The book is based on his Oxford doctoral thesis, it includes an extensive survey of the literature from many different perspectives, including folk-lore, history, anthropology and psychology. The heart of the book is the ethnographic fieldwork conducted by Evans-Wentz, an invaluable snapshot of the fairy belief system taken just on the cusp of modernity. https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/ffcc/index.htm
